Tip Applicant Interviews in Your Favor

“Job applicants are better at interviewing than you are,” a consultant warned HR professionals Tuesday morning. To prove his point, he noted that the number of books that help applicants negotiate the interview process far outnumber the books geared towards helping interviewers.

“Do you know what the best-selling book is on college campuses, outside of textooks?” the consultant asked attendees at his presentation, “Interviewing: What You See Is Not What You Always Get.” The answer, he said, is Knock ’Em Dead, which lists more than 200 difficult job interview questions—and the best ways to answer them.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that some applicants are so skilled at looking good in interviews. After all, they get lots of practice.

To help employers shift the interviewing balance of power back in their favor, we offer the following tips:

Don’t fall in love so fast.
Research from the University of Chicago shows that people generally decide within 14 seconds if they like someone. And when interviewers decide they like someone, they tend to ask easier questions. We suggest the opposite approach: When you find yourself liking an applicant, ask tougher questions. And when you intuitively feel that you don’t like someone, ask easier questions.

Treat the entire application process as a test.
For example, if a job requires employees to show up early, conduct the interview early. One employer needed workers to show up for a 4:30 a.m. shift, so it conducted an interview at that time. When an applicant failed to show up, the employer had all the information it needed.

Another example: Ask interviewees to fill out an application form in its entirety, even if doing so will duplicate the data on their resumes. Those who fail to follow these simple instructions reveal important information about themselves and their work habits.

Take charge of the interview.
For starters, don’t have an applicant’s resume in front of you while you conduct the interview. By using a resume as a guide you allow an applicant’s biased—and perhaps fictitious—accounts to guide the interview process.

Instead, HR professionals must manage the interview. For example, ask applicants about themselves before telling them what the job requires. When employers take the opposite approach, they tell applicants exactly what they want to hear, thereby limiting the odds that they will hear a perfectly truthful account of an applicant’s desires and abilities.

Another important part of managing the interview is managing silence. If applicants struggle to answer a question, avoid the temptation to help them out. Instead, say, “I understand this is a difficult question. Take all the time you need to answer.” This tactic politely makes it clear that you will wait as long as necessary for an answer, and removes the pressure you might feel to speed the process along.
Other interview questions we recommend include:

“Tell me about your very first paying job.” Most people develop their working values in their first job, so the answers you get may be instructive. A good followup question—and one that will likely lead to other questions—is: “What are the three most important things you learned from that experience?”

“What’s the worst trouble you’ve ever been in?” Surprisingly, applicants willingly reveal a great deal about themselves when asked this question. To find out even more, ask the question again, as in “Is that really the worst trouble you’ve ever been in?”

“Tell me how you did on your last performance appraisal.” The follow up questions: “Do you have a copy? Can you bring it with you to a followup interview?” It is surprising how many copies of performance reviews are suddenly “lost.”

For more information, contact Cheryl A. Jones, Manager of Corporate Placement Services for Alpern Rosenthal. She can reached at 412.281.7692, ext. 319 or at cjones@alpern.com.

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